


soldier i can't command

by ghoulfern



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Awkward Tension, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Psychological Trauma, Shared Trauma, Slavery, Slow Burn, sort of removed from the wanderer's og story, this occurs about a decade or so after he leaves the vault
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-09-06 00:21:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16821388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulfern/pseuds/ghoulfern
Summary: Sil knew slavery.  He saw it there, in the stiff way Charon held himself and in the disjointed movements of his body when he did, rarely, push himself off that wall to go take care of some chore out in the Wasteland.  And he saw it most of all in the way Charon had reacted that day, how he'd trembled, gasped for his breath, couldn’t remember himself at all.  How he looked so trapped inside of his body.  Sil had felt like that, before.  Many times.





	1. prelude

**Author's Note:**

> edited to make more sense with my planned plot

It’s the inevitability of his death that pushes Sil into the _knowing_ , and he can taste the bitter, puckering flavor of love on the tip of his tongue, like a drop of aged medicine too rotten to heal anymore. Hands are around his neck, strong hands, familiar ones, and they’re choking him, and he’s on his knees, and he’s dying. They’re strangling him with the vicious intent to kill him, as certain as anything else. He can feel the callouses on their fingers against his skin, little hilltops of experience, of past and of pain, and he feels utterly moronic for focusing on them, but if not for them, he’d have to look up into his killer’s face, to really register whose hands are doing the choking. He doesn’t want to die doing that. 

“Please,” he tries to say, and it comes out lifelessly, a dusty-sounding croak, a husk of a voice. His eyes are streaming with forceful tears as he stares rigidly ahead at the chest of the person in front of him, willing himself not to look up, not to see them. He knows, _he knows_ , but he can’t raise his stare. He tries, again, to say something, but this time, it’s a word he thinks could work, a word that could end this: _Hades_. He wants so desperately to be able to say it, even if it’s soft, like the wisp of a modest prayer, barely audible. He wants it more than anything else in the world; it’s a magic word, and he thinks, with whatever spirit is left within him, that it could help.

But like before, it doesn’t come out right. Nothing comes out this time at all, in fact. He merely opens his mouth to release the last, faint ghost of his will to hold on, and then his vision is starting to splinter away into blackened fragments. His eyes are pulling desperately upward and then back down again, a constant fighting. He doesn’t know what he wants. He is going to die. 

And, wildly, in the way one furiously _needs_ something, Sil gives in. He finally allows himself to look up. Because although Sil does not want to die seeing the face of the person killing him, he does want to die seeing the face of the person that he loves; and they, regrettably, are one in the same. 

* * *

Sil has seen him around, this hulking intimidation of a man, though perhaps it’s a bit rude to call him that; Charon, that’s his name, some mythological mumbo-jumbo that thrills Sil as much as it perplexes him, because _what a name_ _to have,_ especially now. The ferryman in old myths, the gatekeeper to Hades. Sil has read enough to know. He's a big fan of those stories, really.

Charon. It feels like a sinister name, its meaning hidden behind centuries of destroyed books, but it is also somewhat comforting. Sil rolls it over in his head, wondering which description is truer.

Winthrop reckons that it has something to do with Ahzrukhal, and Sil reckons (hopes) that it doesn’t, that it’s really his name and that no one evil could have given it to him. 

Anyway, Charon’s just shot Ahzrukhal, so it doesn’t even matter, really. Sil walks in on it just as the second shot goes off, pushing bodily through the double doors with a goofy smile on his face. He’s just made a pretty good trade with Tulip for some spare parts, and he’s excited to experiment in his hotel room later on, but then he spots the blood spattered across the wall behind the bar and he frowns. 

“That’s not good,” he says aloud, quietly, accidentally, and Charon turns to look at him, face impassive as ever. Except for his eyes. The light dances in them, revealing something secret and elated. Sil tries smiling again, but the bar patrons jostling him to get out the door is throwing a wrench into that particular gear. He takes a step to the side, his eyes drifting briefly to a figure still sitting patiently at the bar. He recognizes them, but he doesn’t show it.

Once everyone’s left and the door squeaks shut behind the last straggler, Sil blinks and looks away, toward the blood. It’s a rather impressive display, very artistic. “About time someone did that, huh?” he mutters, nervously.

Charon grunts something that could be vaguely affirmative and turns away, squats down behind the bar. He’s down there for a long moment before he resurfaces, throws his shotgun over his shoulder, and looks back to Sil. He must have been checking to see that Ahzrukhal was actually dead.

The figure at the bar turns, revealing a face half-shrouded with a green bandana. Their eyes, however, are sparkling enough that Sil can tell they are smiling. He feels a brief zip of excitement in his chest.

“Well,” says the figure, standing from their stool with a jaunty, unabashed confidence akin to a 12-year-old, “you sure don’t waste any time.”

Charon, whose eyes are still trained curiously on Sil, nods. The figure turns their gaze toward Sil, but Sil is too busy looking at the counter. There lies a crumpled and stained piece of paper, which would be unrecognizable to Sil had he not planned for this all to happen. Well, not the Ahzrukhal dying part. That was just a bonus. 

The stranger gingerly lifts the contract up off the counter and thrusts it toward Charon. The tall ghoul frowns, reaching out a hand to push the contract away.

“It is yours,” he says, carefully, as if, even now, his own defiance scares him.

The stranger shakes their head. “Nuh. You can bring it to Carol.” Their voice is gravelly and consciously androgynous. They jerk their thumb toward the door. “Ain’t mine. Only bought it.”

Charon’s frown somehow deepens past what Sil thought was possible, and this time, he pushes the contract away with a sure hand. “No,” he says. It’s firm, and Sil is a bit afraid that this won’t end as well as he’d hoped.

The stranger, however, is persisting in their charade. “Bring it to Carol,” they say. It is a command. Charon seems to jerk back into full wakefulness. He nods once, mechanically, and crosses to the door in a few strides. Sil watches him moving against the gory backdrop, feeling somewhat nauseated at the sight, and he doesn’t snap out of it until after Charon’s left the bar. He looks back to the stranger.

They’ve yanked their bandana down off the lower half of their face, revealing a beaming grin. 

“Ain’t seen you in months, slim,” says Crow, her dark eyes glinting against the flicker of fluorescent lights. “How’ve you been?”

Sil smiles, still trembling slightly enough that he shoves his hands self-consciously into his pockets. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m… good,” he says. Then, he swallows, hesitating just a moment, worrying his lip between his teeth and dodging Crow’s eye. “D’you think Carol will give it up to me that easy?”

Crow barks a laugh. “You kiddin’?” she drawls, her wicked smile still shining. She pulls the hood of her jacket down too, and her bright, wild braid tumbles over her shoulder, free at last. “She _loves_ you. Prob’ly don’t want a thing to do with that contract, anyhow.”

She observes him for a long, silent moment, her manic smile slowly fading into something more natural, her eyes softening slightly. “It’s on you now, Sil,” she says, nodding toward the door. “Follow him.”

* * *

Sil does follow Charon, the nervous jittering of his teeth making him feel as if he’s going more insane with every passing second. He nearly dashes down the stairs and straight out the door, but Crow is watching him from the Ninth, so he continues to march unwillingly to his possible death, cursing her over and over in his head. Once he passes through the doors into Carol’s Place, his heartbeat has ramped up so hard that he can feel it pummeling his throat. She was right. He’s on his own, now.

The contract exchanges hands just as he enters, Carol grimacing as she takes it and folds it carefully into a tiny square, and Sil feels a mysterious stinging feeling somewhere in the vague region of his heart. He wants that contract. He hopes, after all this, that he can have it.

He’s been convincing himself for many months that a bodyguard would be the perfect solution to his problem of always being too scared to go outside. The trek from Megaton to Underworld is always his least favorite thing, and he often has panic attacks the whole way along, like some sort of twisted progress marker. _This is my fifth one, must be close by now_. 

A bodyguard, sure. An excuse, something to squelch the odd feeling he’s had since he’s met Charon. That innate, overwhelming desire to free him. 

“Charon…” Carol whispers, her kind voice taking on something more hesitant and trembly. “I can’t keep this. You know that.”

And then her eyes find Sil, who’s standing stiffly in the doorway wringing his hands like a cartoon character. Charon turns to follow her gaze, and his blank expression morphs into an unconcealed grimace. 

“Silvio,” Carol says, half surprised to see him there, half relieved. 

“I’ll take it,” Sil blurts, because he’s been waiting for this, hoping for it. His hands still, and he glances over to Charon, who is still staring at him, frozen in his distaste. “I can… can pay you, too, I’ve been—” He pauses, because perhaps admitting that he’d been planning to buy the damnable thing this whole time might not be the best course of action right now. The image of Ahzrukhal’s gore dripping thickly down the wall flashes violently through his mind. “—been wanting a, um… a companion, I… uh. I guess.”

Charon lets out a huff of breath that sounds suspiciously like a derisive snort, and he finally turns his head away. Carol looks at Sil for a very long moment before she turns her gaze up toward the taller ghoul. She’s fiddling with the folded contract, rubbing the pads of her fingers gently against the edges and twisting it about in her hands. “Silvio will be good to you,” she says quietly, and it seems like something she’s saying only to herself, a reassurance to make her hand it over. “Charon—”

Charon lays a hand on the counter and leans slightly forward, his head inclined toward the ghoulette, his face turned completely away from Sil. He mutters something that Sil can’t hear, though certainly not for lack of trying (he takes a few covert steps forward and pretends that he’s looking at the broken clock on the wall behind Charon’s head, but when Greta glances up at him from over Carol’s shoulder and catches his eye with a smirk, he bounces back onto his heels and stands there, _casually_ ). 

Carol laughs, resting her own hand on top of Charon’s. It’s a faint giggle, like she’s carefully fighting back tears at the same time. Charon pushes away from the counter and folds his arms in front of his chest; Sil can tell that laughter had not been the preferred response, even if it wasn’t altogether genuine in its mirth. Carol’s hand falls to rest on the countertop, alone. 

“He’s _good_ ,” Carol says to Charon, hushed and insistent. Her eyes find Sil again, and they’re infinitely fond. If Sil wasn’t so wired right now, perhaps he’d feel a rush of warmth and compassion, but all he feels is cold discomfort, and his eyes keep darting from her kindly face to the back of Charon’s head.

Charon stands there for a few more moments before he unfolds his arms and reaches out for the contract. Carol drops it into his open palm and smiles. Sil feels as if his soul is slowly being pulled out of his body like a thick woven thread, and when Charon turns around and starts walking toward him, his face drawn into something akin to severe dislike, Sil feels like even his physical form is ascending to some higher plane. He’s petrified. How could he think that having a giant ghoul as a companion was something desirable? If he pissed Charon off at any point—and it seemed he already had pissed Charon off, somehow—the guy could crush Sil’s head in one hand without flinching. 

So, it’s a surprise to Sil when Charon draws up in front of him and holds out the folded contract between thumb and forefinger, and waits patiently for him to take it. It's a very gentle sort of interaction, contrasted sharply by the annoyed expression on Charon's face. His mouth is still stretched into a tight, unamused line, but at least the flames of hatred seem to have faded out of his eyes. Sil takes the contract from him, grabbing it as if plucking a bug from the ground by one leg, all delicate movement, and he looks up at Charon and he tries his hardest to grin, because now they’re partners of a sort. It’s bizarre, _they’re_ bizarre, but he wants to make the best of it. He wants Charon to like him. 

But Charon is already turning away from him and walking off across the sitting area, weaving through tables and chairs with the deft surety of someone who's been alive and bored with it for far too long, and Sil realizes belatedly that Charon is headed directly toward his room. It’s the only room for rent, so Sil shouldn’t be so surprised that Charon’s found it, but it still unsettles him. Charon disappears into the darkness and shuts the door resolutely behind him. 

Perhaps Sil should sleep out here tonight, on one of the couches, because Charon seems to have already taken possession of his room. When he makes eye contact with Carol again, still holding the contract in one hand as if he has no clue what to do with it (he doesn’t), she shrugs. He reaches back for his knapsack, but she’s already shaking her head. _She doesn’t want me to pay her. Of course she doesn’t_. He shoves the contract into the breast pocket of his shirt instead, and gently pats it into place with a feather-light touch of his fingers.

“Looks like you have a new friend, huh, stringbean?” Greta pipes up from over Carol’s shoulder, her shit-eating grin especially shit-eating tonight. Sil glares at her, unable to verbalize every frenzied thought now running through his head at once. 

He turns on his heel and leaves instead, not knowing at all where he’s going until he ends up in the bathroom downstairs, shutting himself into a stall, his breathing shallow and barely-there. He has not thought about how it would feel to have Charon’s contract in his hands, heavy like a weight, like a hundred years of hastily scrawled signatures, written more or less in blood. He sits down on the floor and rests his head in his hands. He never thought he would be here. Perhaps, in a way, he _had_ saved Charon. He was better than Ahzrukhal, surely. But he never thought he would own someone. Not in any capacity.

Sil hears footsteps every so often, punctuated sometimes by the half-hearted, broken flush of a toilet, but it sounds faraway, as if it’s coming from another room. He stays sitting on the floor most of the night, focusing on his breath as unpleasant memories resurface, slow and agonizing in their truth. The walk back to Carol’s place happens automatically, and he must look a sight, because everyone's been staring at him along the way. 

“Where you been?” Greta calls as soon as he pushes through the door, but he shakes his head. 

“Nowhere,” he says, and means it. He crosses the room and pushes open his door. 

The soft clinking of metal on metal greets him, rhythmic, soothing. It’s still dark, except for the moon shining softly through the window, but he can see the faint outline of Charon in the corner armchair, leaning over his shotgun in his lap. Sil doesn’t think about how late it must be now, how long he had been in the bathroom, how long Charon has been awake. He just crawls into bed without any fanfare, and he’s asleep almost instantly to the sound of Charon's obsessive movement; dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. 


	2. obcursus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took literally so long lol sorry!!!! anyways here it is. this chapter takes place like a month or so before chapter 1, and explains who crow is a lil bit more, dips a toe into sil's ~mysterious past~, etc etc. hope yall like

**Three Months Earlier**

It was sometime back in May when Sil had finally gathered the courage, after six months of distantly watching, to approach Charon. The ghoul stood in the corner of The Ninth Circle like a giant sentinel, his eyes shining and narrowed, and Sil walked slowly toward him, as if approaching a skittish animal in the wild. In his hand he held a bottle of whiskey, a peace offering of some sort, maybe. Perhaps this was too wishful. 

Sil took a seat at the table nearest to the ghoul, who audibly grunted and shuffled minutely toward the opposite direction. A response to this flashed through Sil’s mind, and before he could catch his tongue, it came spilling right out. 

“Do I really smell that bad?” he mumbled, sharp and joking. He turned his head slightly. No response. 

Sil made a small sound in the back of his throat and turned away to study his whiskey bottle instead. He’d found it scavenging, a brand he’d never spotted before. He figured it was special, in a way, so he’d kept it in his bag, refusing to drink it until something happened. He didn’t know what yet. Feeling foolish, he tucked the bottle back into his bag and set it at his feet. A few moments passed where the only sound was the movement of bar patrons shuffling aimlessly around them. 

“Does he give you any breaks?” Sil asked suddenly, turning again so he could watch Charon out of the corner of his eye. The ghoul shifted a little but said nothing. Sil inclined his head in a nod. “Alright, I’m sorry for pushing. Just… curious.” He turned back to the table. 

“If you… need something from me, you should talk to Ahzrukhal,” Charon said. The ghoul’s gruff voice came out so hushed Sil hardly caught the words. Without moving to look back at him, he nodded again. He hadn’t expected the hesitancy. He didn’t plan on talking to Ahzrukhal, but he stood anyway, feeling as if he should leave regardless. 

As Sil picked up his knapsack from the floor, he muttered a quick, “take care,” and thought he saw the ghoul’s grip on his shotgun falter. But when he looked back over his shoulder as he exited The Ninth Circle, Charon stood still as a soldier, his knuckles strained and white against his gun. 

* * *

Sil came back the next week, this time without the whiskey, and sat at the same table. He’d brought a book with him instead—something mellow, inconspicuous—and had gotten three whole chapters in before Charon made any sort of acknowledgement toward his existence. 

“I _told_ you that you should talk to Ahzrukhal,” he said stiffly. Sil’s eyebrows raised, but he didn’t turn or respond, merely licked a finger and flipped to the next page in his book. He heard Charon shift on his feet and reposition the shotgun in his arms. “Did you hear me?” the ghoul asked. He had an edge to his voice, then, that made Sil close the book. It wasn’t annoyance, but confusion. 

“I heard you,” Sil replied quietly. He set the book down on the table and turned. Charon was looking right at him, but it was hard to tell because he hadn’t moved his head. Only his eyes watched Sil, and the usual frown still graced his mouth. He said nothing more. “But I don’t want to talk to Ahzrukhal, Charon,” Sil continued. “I think you know most people wouldn’t want to. He's kind of a dick.”

Charon only grunted at this, and Sil saw that his eyes left him to once again stare directly ahead. He’d been foolish to expect a snort of laughter, or even a slight smile. 

Sil stood and grabbed his book up from the table, feeling something like defeat settling into his shoulders. He looked toward Charon, one last brief, pleading stare, but the ghoul did not make any effort to return his gaze. Though his fingers did seem to tighten, again, around the shotgun in his hands. 

Sil wanted to say something, though he did not know what it was. He left, instead, regretfully silent. 

* * *

Sil stayed for the following week in Underworld, as he was too tired to travel back to Megaton, and Carol was so lenient with him because of his connection to Gob. Plus, he liked to think that she and Greta were growing rather fond of him, aside. The room didn’t cost much more to rent for a week than it did for a single night, and he was grateful, for once, to stay for so long. 

Every day that week, Sil would visit The Ninth Circle and sit in his usual seat. He was typically in his flannel pajamas, too exhausted to bother changing for a one-minute walk to the bar, and he always brought his book. It was an old one he’d found, called _The Fellowship of the Ring,_ and he very much liked it, even if some of the pages were torn out or stained. He’d actually made a fair bit of progress in it, as he had given up trying to speak to Charon at all. It was clear Charon wasn’t allowed to oblige him or, simply, he just didn’t want to reply to Sil earnestly. But he could tell that the ghoul was perplexed by his constant presence.

At the end of the week, Sil came into The Ninth Circle to find that Charon was not there at all. Sil sat in his usual seat anyway and propped open his book on his lap, though his reading was distracted, because he found himself waiting. Words lost their meanings completely, and the smattering of patrons' voices that usually never bothered him had grown into near-unbearable cacophony. He sat in his chair regardless, dutifully scanning lines of text he'd already read thrice over, his feet anxiously tapping against the linoleum.

About two hours after he’d arrived, someone came bursting in through the doors. Sil’s head jerked up from his book and he was at first delighted to see that it was Charon, standing in the doorway. But then he noticed that Charon's chest was heaving, and his normally carefully hidden emotions were now pooling in his dark stare. He was clutching a canvas bag in one hand, while the other was clenched painfully at his side. 

Sil looked to the bar to see that Ahzrukhal was absent. Instead, Tulip leaned there, looking serene as she chatted with the bar patrons, and paying no mind to the spectacle at the door. It seemed that the gentle ghoulette had taken Ahzrukhal’s place at just the right moment. Sil snapped his book shut and leaned over the arm of his chair.

He watched Charon for a couple of minutes and, when it seemed he wouldn’t move, he whispered sharply, “ _psst_ , Charon!” The ghoul glanced up wildly and Sil saw fully the unconcealed fire in his eyes. It surprised him so much that he didn’t say anything else, only sat watching him. After a moment, Charon finally moved jerkily toward Sil’s table and collapsed into the chair beside him. 

“Are you alright?” Sil asked softly. 

Charon seemed to blink for the first time and swallowed hard. “Yes, I am alright,” he said in a croak. 

Sil turned to face Charon fully. The ghoul sat with his knees knocking together, hands in his lap. His shotgun was strapped to his back, and not held defensively in front of him. His fingers twitched against his legs and he stared down at them blankly, as if not sure what to do with them without a weapon. 

“You can breathe, if you want,” Sil remarked with a soft smile. Charon did not look up, nor did he seem to take a breath. “I’m serious,” Sil added, his smile turning quickly into a concerned frown. “You should breathe.”

“I cannot,” Charon rasped. Sil’s own breath hitched in his throat and he felt himself reaching out to touch Charon’s arm. The ghoul jerked it away on impulse, before letting it settle back against his legs, but Sil was already retracting his hand.

“I know you won’t... uh, won't _want_ to, but could you follow me?” he asked hurriedly, standing, and attempting to drag Charon up with him. The large ghoul did not move. Tulip, and some of the others, now began to look in their direction. The bar was nearly empty because of the hour—it was only around noon—but it was still too many people for Sil. And some of them might tell Ahzrukhal what had happened whenever he came back. 

“ _Charon_ ,” Sil gritted, tugging desperately on the ghoul’s sleeve, “I’m tired of the stubborn shtick, just... get up. I can help you if you just _get up_ and follow me.” Sil pulled at the ghoul’s arm, his frustration rapidly dissolving into fear. Just when he thought his effort was fruitless and that Charon would be caught hyperventilating by his highly unsympathetic master, he rose slowly from his chair. 

Standing directly beside Charon, now, Sil understood why no one usually came near him. He had at least half a foot on Sil, who liked to think that he was already tall himself. But, despite his towering height, Charon looked so horribly small as he followed Sil into the adjoining room, his few breaths rattling out of his mouth, his shoulders hunched. Sil sat him down on a couch and sunk down beside him.

“You’re having a panic attack,” Sil whispered. Charon said nothing, only continued to rasp out his shallow breaths. Sil laid a tentative hand on the ghoul’s arm again and, while he did flinch, Charon did not pull away. Good. He needed a tether to reality, a touch that could keep him in the present. “There’s this trick I use sometimes,” Sil continued, his voice soft, and he noticed, at this admittance, that Charon glanced over at him with curious, hazy eyes. Sil felt momentarily bashful, but plowed onward anyway. “Could you… could you just count to ten for me? Doesn’t have to be out loud, could be in your head. Just focus on counting to ten. Could you do that?”

Slowly, Charon nodded his head. Sil watched as Charon closed his eyes and seemed to be just barely mouthing the numbers, his lips moving deliberately at the same time that they were hardly moving at all. After a short moment, he opened his eyes again. His breathing was still jagged and uneven, but he was beginning to calm down. Sil nodded, as if he were encouraging not only Charon but also himself, and he smiled. "Do it again," he said gently.

Charon obeyed, staring down at Sil's hand on his arm as he mouthed the words. By the time he reached ten again, his breathing had slowed, but he still looked vaguely anxious. Sil lifted his hand away from Charon’s arm, fearing that now that he was calmer, his touch was overstepping; but when he pulled away, Charon glanced sharply up and over at him, with an emotion Sil could not identify. 

Charon quickly amended this by looking away again, then standing up from the couch. Clenching his fists, he turned to look down at Sil, who sat staring up at him wordlessly. 

“Thank you for helping me,” Charon said, though it came out of his mouth through gritted teeth. Sil smiled anyway.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered to Charon’s already retreating back. He sat on the couch for a long time after, until more people began to filter into the bar. Ahzrukhal eventually came back.

“Ah, Charon, how was it? Did you get what I asked for?” Sil heard the man ask. His voice was distractingly nasty, with such an unpleasant edge to it that Sil felt he could strangle him. It seemed to drip with pure contempt. 

“Yes, Ahzrukhal.” He heard the rattling sound of caps, the greed in Ahzrukhal’s voice as he peered inside Charon’s bag and shifted the money around with one hand, mumbling something. Sil’s fists curled in his lap as he sat on the couch, helplessly listening to the exchange. Listening to the absence of thanks, or the dismissal a job well done should gain. 

Ahzrukhal, instead, merely said, “good,” and walked away.

* * *

**One Month Earlier**

It was a couple months later that Sil decided he’d grown tired of watching. The whole of Underworld was complacent in unconcealed evil, including himself. After his last experience with Charon, he felt sick any time he visited. He didn’t have to stop by the bar to feel a sense of intense shame wash over him. It happened as soon as he passed under that skull, right at the entrance. It permeated the air and ate at him so vehemently that his visits eventually became shorter and shorter, until he rarely even traveled there at all. 

Sil knew slavery. He saw it there, in the stiff way Charon held himself and in the disjointed movements of his body when he did, rarely, push himself off that wall to go take care of some chore out in the Wasteland. And he saw it most of all in the way Charon had reacted that day, how he'd trembled, gasped for his breath, couldn’t remember himself at all. How he looked so trapped inside of his body. Sil had felt like that, before. Many times.

Sil had begun to sit in The Ninth Circle more often again in mid-July, waiting for something. Something that would make him stop having to watch. But he wasn’t altogether sure what that could be, or if it were possible that something like that could happen. One particularly balmy Friday--which Sil had spent entirely inside Underworld because, as Greta had put it, his delicate human skin would shrivel and burn off if he didn't--Sil was brainstorming how to steal the contract from Ahzrukhal. It was a pointless plan, seeing as Sil was far too terrified by the mere idea of it to ever actually carry it out, but he was scribbling it onto a napkin anyway, muttering to himself as he drew up a timeline and crossed ideas out.

It was at that particular moment of uncertainty that a stranger, one he’d recognized from their very public past endeavors, came stumbling into the bar, like an answer falling from the heavens into his lap. They looked rather bedraggled, their clothes torn in multiple spots and their eyes bloodshot above a green, stained bandana covering the lower half of their face. As Sil’s table was the closest to the door—he’d decided to give Charon a break from his smothering presence—the stranger collapsed into a chair directly beside him and heaved a great, shaky sigh. 

“You didn’t bring any riff raff in here with you, Crow? I hope?” Ahzrukhal called from the bar. Sil glanced over at him and noticed the ghoul poised in a defensive sort of way, leaning over the bar to stare unblinking at the stranger. He was sneering, clearly not too keen on their presence. Sil hadn’t seen Charon take anyone on in the bar yet, and he wasn’t ready to see it now. He might've said something, even, had Crow not remedied the whole ordeal by shaking their head and saying shortly, "'course not, Hal. C'mon. You know me."

They winked jauntily, then turned back to Sil and squinted at him. Sil could see even beneath the bandana that Crow was not smiling. “Fuckin’ bastard, ain’t he?” they whispered, jerking their head toward the bartender, who was now busying himself with something else. 

“Yeah,” Sil said distantly. He was suddenly very conscious of his fingers on his cold glass of Nuka-Cola. Something like an electric jolt ran through him and he found himself with a rather bizarre idea. “Do you, um… take requests?” he asked. He felt stupid about the wording, but the stranger couldn’t seem to care less.

“Quick-tongued mercenary at your service, sir.” Crow lifted a finger to salute Sil, and their bandana shifted slightly, indicating a smile. “Think I’m pretty good at killin' an’ sneakin' an’ most of all _talkin_ ', if it’s not too braggy to say.”

Sil stared at the stranger, whose bright green eyes flashed with mischief from beneath their hood. Despite being so clearly injured, they seemed rearing to go at Sil’s mere word. “This isn’t really a… I don’t want you to kill anyone, um, I want you to-- to _free_ someone for me, I guess,” Sil managed, his words coming out all jumbled. He realized that he was trembling a little, and the ice in his drink had begun to clank noisily against the glass. Feeling pathetic, he released it and drew his hands down to his lap instead. He’d not felt this way in a very long time, so uncertain and small. He had no idea where the feeling had come from, but he suspected it must be because of the subject matter. Something too familiar.

“You’re a little nervous, ain’t ya’?” Crow asked, though it was a quiet and good-natured comment. “Relax, I take anythin' I can get. You came to the right person. Or, well—I fell into your lap at just the right time.” Another wink, but this one with sincerity behind it. “What’s the scoop? Who are we releasin' from their bonds?” Crow leaned toward Sil, making him impossibly more uncomfortable than he already felt. 

“Charon,” Sil supplied, his voice a whisper. This seemed to give Crow pause, for they reeled back in their chair, crossing their arms in front of their chest. 

“You wan' me to steal _that_ dude from Ahzrukhal?” they asked sharply. “Have you _seen him_?”

“Not _steal_ ,” Sil corrected in a hushed, urgent whisper. Crow seemed to relax minutely. “I’ll pay you for half of whatever he costs, it’s all I can probably afford. Because I know he must cost something. I’ve been here long enough to know.”

Something in his voice must have rang clear in Crow’s mind, because they leaned back toward him again and nodded. “Alright,” they said, their kind tone returning rather easily. “You want it done today, then?” they asked, raising their eyebrows. 

“No,” said Sil, casting a cautious glance toward Ahzrukhal, who still seemed busy cleaning and chatting. “In a month or so. I can’t be here when you do it, I don’t want to risk anything. I have some…” he coughed awkwardly and looked down at the table. “…experience with slavers. Not too jazzed about dealing with any fallout, there, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Crow murmured, watching Sil a little too closely for his liking. “Could I ask why the desire? I don’t see many of you folk in the Wasteland, people who acknowledge an atrocity so readily. Prepared to do somethin’ about it.”

“I didn’t acknowledge it at first,” Sil said quickly. He made to say something else but stopped himself. He didn’t want to share more than he felt he had to. He’d already said too much. “I have some money lying around. And he’s… clearly miserable.”

Crow nodded, their analyzing gaze finally drifting away from Sil toward Charon. “Sure is. Ain’t hard to tell.”

They sat for a moment, Crow staring at Charon and Sil staring at Crow, until, with a sigh, Crow yanked their bandana down to their chin. 

“Well, as you heard, I’m Crow,” they said, turning back to Sil. A young woman's face now stared defiantly back at Sil, something of a dare lurking in her eyes. She thrust her hand out toward him, and he grasped it warmly; she hadn’t expected his sudden agreement, he could tell from her expression, and they shook. She grinned. 

“Looks like you and I got a deal,” she said quietly. 

* * *

“It’s 2,000 caps.”

Sil sat outside on the steps to Underworld, staring up at Crow with a mixed expression. Most of it was disbelief, but another, smaller part of it was fury. He’d expected this, of course, hoping that it wouldn’t end up being true. Yet, as she told him the news, he still found himself surprised, and most of all disgusted. 

“The total?” he asked drily, knowing the answer. 

Crow chuckled, shook her head. She'd taken off her hood, revealing a long braid that she'd had tucked away into her cloak. Wisps of her blonde hair fell out of the plait to frame her face (which was surprisingly lithe and freckled for an infamous merc) and her bright eyes flashed in the low light. “Uh-uh. Your half.”

Her confirmation sent him partially reeling, even if he'd expected it. He leaned back against the wall and breathed in deep. His gaze found the high ceiling, followed the intricate angles of architecture crumbling under two centuries of grief and destruction. 

“Alright,” he mumbled eventually. His voice sounded far off to him, as if it were coming from someone else’s mouth in some alternate realm. “I’ll need a month or so.”

Crow’s eyes were cautious in surveying him. “You’re still doin' this, then?” she asked slowly. 

Sil only nodded slowly, not feeling the obligation to explain to her why. Despite her kind eyes and weathered, knowledgeable demeanor, he still didn’t trust her so easily. Besides, he felt numb and completely sapped of energy. The fact that he had to go all the way back to Megaton after this was enough to make him want to crawl into a yao guai’s den and hibernate alongside them, with all the dangers that came with it. 

Crow seemed to recognize this, and nodded again, this time more curtly. She turned to head back inside the city, but just before she reached for the door, she spun around to face him. “You’re real kind. Doin’ this for him.”

Sil looked up at her. “What kind of person would I be to ignore it?” he asked. His words came out crackly and sharp, like jagged bits of glass. “People might think the world is built for this type of thing now, that we have to do it to survive.” He stood up and leveled her with a hard stare. “I don’t.”

Crow held his gaze, as if she were about to fight what he had said. But after a moment, she dropped her hand away from the door and said quietly, “Me neither. I’ve just never been brave enough.”

Standing there with Crow, something inside of Sil seemed to wake from a long nap. A worldly mercenary who stumbled into bars covered head-to-toe in blood and dirt, claiming that her courage was missing. His hard eyes softened, and he found himself holding out a hand to her, his movements steady and sure for the first time in weeks. 

“You can be brave with me, then," he offered. She smiled, and took his hand.


	3. muted

Sil lays awake, his face still pressed into his pillow, his eyelids heavy against the early morning. He doesn’t know how long he’s been like this, in a sort of half-conscious trance, but it’s like his dreams bled straight into his reality, and he simply stepped out of his head, right into it. The room feels otherworldly, and safe, and endlessly comforting, as if it's separated from the world altogether. 

He’s watching Charon, allowing himself that. Up until now, it’s been a whole lot of peripheral views and avoidance. 

Charon sleeps heavy, his snores coming like soft footfalls against snow. Sil is perplexed by it. He’s never seen Charon sleep before, nor has he seen him even remotely relaxed. The ghoul never slips; Sil imagines he isn’t— _wasn’t_ , he corrects himself—allowed to. He imagines a lot of things about Charon, and his bloodied contract, and the wariness that Sil catches off him in heedless waves any time they see each other. 

But here, in the soothing silence of Sil’s hotel room, with Charon slumped over and vulnerable, permitted to be human again, those things don’t seem to exist anymore. Not here. Not at all. 

* * *

Charon opens his eyes to see the smoothskin staring at him, and it would be startling if the kid didn’t look so damn _happy_ to see him. That just makes it annoying. 

Charon barely moves to acknowledge him, the side of his face still resting entirely against one propped up hand, his body heavy with exhaustion. Sleeping is always a bad idea for him. He can never catch up; it almost always makes him feel worse. 

“You slept,” Sil says, though, and cheerfully, like it’s good news. He’s scrambling up and out of his bedsheets with the excited fervor of a child about to receive a gift, and Charon can only blink at him, unable to figure out how he’s gotten into this shitstorm. For an insane moment, he almost misses Ahzrukhal. At least with him, there was routine. With this kid… _Sil,_ whatever kind of name that is (though he supposes he has no room to judge)… he doesn’t entirely know what to expect. 

Sil has no qualms about shimmying back into his jeans right in front of Charon and chattering excitedly about… something. Charon’s not listening. He’s troubled; he cannot recall when, exactly, Sil had taken _off_ his pants, and when he tries to think back to the previous night, he feels a brief rush of embarrassment for focusing so thoughtfully on it, and thus flushes it out of his mind, turning his eyes determinedly toward the floor. He still isn’t listening to Sil, so when the infuriating smoothskin turns to him, half dressed and eyes moon-bright, and says, “right?”, Charon startles, his chin dislodging from his hand. He sits up straight in his chair in an effort to make it look like a purposeful movement, his fingers automatically itching toward his shotgun, which he finds, unfortunately, is no longer in his lap. It’s resting at his feet, much like a loyal dog. He feels prickly with sudden anxiety. He can’t even remember falling asleep last night, let alone setting his gun down on the ground. It seems entirely like something he wouldn’t do. 

Sil’s voice tiptoes into his thoughts. “You weren’t listening, were you?”

It’s a question that would have felt like the smiting of God from any other master, but the way Sil says it is different. It lilts on something like amusement, ending not with a question mark but a light chuckle. He’s watching Charon as he reaches toward his shirt, which is hanging from a bedpost as if it were carelessly thrown there, and he’s smiling warmly. Charon doesn’t exactly know how to counter this—he’s only used to aggression. So, he rises from his chair, rigidly, and stands there waiting like a soldier, saying nothing and feeling exceptionally stupid doing so. 

Sil does something funny with his mouth, then, a cross between frowning and chewing on his bottom lip, and turns away to pull his shirt on. He yanks it roughly over his head in one movement, his long arms sprouting out like weeds. It’s far too small a shirt for him, and a sliver of his stomach shows beneath the hem when he reaches up to smooth his hair carefully back away from his face. A habitual movement, Charon thinks fleetingly. But then he does it again, and again, and one more time, rapidly and without stopping, and Charon’s feelings of anxiety seem to heighten. It _is_ habitual. It’s obsessive. 

“You—you don’t have to, like…” Sil pauses, swallowing hard enough that Charon can see his Adam’s apple bobbing. Sil looks back at him, and the shiny enthusiasm that had just been there has disappeared. He just looks pale, now. Scared. Like he’s building up all his courage to speak. “You don’t have to be all weird.” He waves a vague hand at Charon, grimacing. “Like that. Stiff. Waiting for me to, like, _command_ you.” Sil looks away from him again. “I hate that,” he says, almost too quietly for Charon to hear. Then, he kneels down and begins digging through his knapsack, frantic eyes clearly unseeing. Charon can tell he’s not looking for anything at all.

He doesn’t know what to do with any of this. He doesn’t know how to interact with this kid. He’s trying to figure it out now, while Sil is distracted, and, in his effort, a memory, one fuzzy around the edges, peeks shyly into his skull. Sil, leaning toward him on the couch in the Ninth, his eyes kind and his movements sure. Pulling him back toward the light, all willing and gentle. An anchor, the only one he's ever had. The memory gives him pause enough to speak—to reassure. Something he’s never made an effort to do before, not that he can remember. 

“Okay,” Charon says. His voice is gravelly and low, but Sil startles at the sound of it anyway, his hands pausing in their shuffling, and he glances sharply toward Charon. He doesn’t look like the same person Charon remembers seeing in the bar, not at all. He looks much smaller, frail. Anxious. The irritation that’s been grating at Charon since… well, however long, seems to finally cease. For a moment, Sil is a bit like him. For a moment, Charon does not hate him. 

“O-Okay?” Sil repeats. Charon nods, slowly so he doesn’t miss it, and Sil’s smile tentatively returns. 

Charon can’t recall when it began. It just happened, gradually, like a poisonous flower blooming, and it continued to grow even despite Sil being, well, apparently decent. 

Sil would appear in the Ninth, his lanky body confident at the same time that it was woefully nervous and shaky. He was all whistles and grins, though, keeping up appearances and doing favors, even for the scumbags. Charon didn’t like him from the get-go: too happy, too self-assured, too _handsome_ , in that goofy sort of way where he doesn’t know it at all. Charon’s gotten plenty an earful from Tulip about how fucking _handsome_ the guy is, but Charon thinks he’s scrawny and needs a haircut. 

And his _tics_. Charon noticed them the first time he saw him, and never ceased to notice them thereafter. Sil had come into the bar that first time, settled into a stool, and began a conversation with Ahzrukhal. All the while, his fingers were tapping out a steady rhythm of three on his thigh, one round after another, stiff and compulsive. It had set Charon off, the broken synapses in his brain crying out with worry, and he’d taken his one bathroom break then, feeling resentful the entire trek downstairs because he hadn’t even had to piss. 

Then Sil, of course, graduated to pestering Charon, and by that time, Charon wanted to throttle him, hoped to God that Sil would piss off Ahzrukhal so he could be told, explicitly, that he could do so. Maybe he was just annoyed by how Sil carried himself, like someone who wasn’t sure who they wanted to be. Or maybe it was because of Sil’s insistence to save him; Charon had suspected, for a long time, that the whole thing had just been a ruse to look a hero. 

Now, though, that piece seems to be from a completely different puzzle. That piece doesn’t make any sense at all. It hadn't made sense to him since that day, where Sil had helped to calm him down. And all of that makes Charon, quite frankly, even angrier. 

“I am going to the bathroom,” he says, resolutely and without looking at Sil, and then he marches right out of the room, realizing only after he’s made it downstairs that he hasn’t brought his gun with him. The anxiety buzzing around in his body spikes. 

* * *

Sil watches Charon leave, and hardly has any time to himself to ruminate about the whole situation before Crow is busting in through the door without knocking, her eyes wide and shocked above her bandana. 

“You piss him off?” she breathes, slamming the door shut behind her. She yanks her bandana down and leans back against the wall. She’s a little flushed, but the nervous color in her cheeks brings her pale face to life. She looks almost delicate, like a fairy, even as she plows hurriedly on in her heavy Southern drawl. “He stormed right by me on the stairs an’ I swear if I’d of looked at him wrong, he woulda’ straight killed me then an’ there.”

Sil frowns. He realizes, dimly, that he’s still kneeling on the floor with his hands submerged in his knapsack, so he quickly stands up. “I—” he begins, but he doesn’t really know what to tell her. He has no _idea_ if he’s pissed Charon off or, actually, what he’s done to piss him off, because he’s definitely pissed. Sil’s been stewing on it since he bought the contract. Hell, maybe even before then. The guy is unreadable, and always has been. 

Sil gives up on explaining and shrugs. He sits down on the edge of the mattress. 

“ _Listen_ —” Crow starts, holding a finger up toward him as if she’s about to lay out some sort of deal, but she’s immediately interrupted by the creak of the door behind her. She jumps away from it and scurries backward into the corner of the room, looking petrified. Sil muses, once again, that she seems fairly cowardly for someone who's famous for kicking ass. 

Charon peeks his head into the room, his eyes locking automatically onto Sil. He looks almost more fearful than Crow does as he steps gingerly into the room and shuts the door behind him. He doesn’t seem to notice Crow at all. 

“I apologize,” he says quietly as he approaches Sil. His fright seems to drain with every step, his face settling slowly back into its usual emotional obscurity, but his words sound meaningful. Painfully so. As if he's being forced to say them, somehow.

Sil furrows his brow. “For… for what?” he murmurs faintly. He’s vaguely aware of his hands gripping the blanket he’s sitting on, balling the fabric up between his fingers. 

“For leaving. You did not allow me to.”

Charon stares down at Sil, and Sil gazes up at him, blinking stupidly. 

“You can do whatever you want,” he says in a sort of horrified whisper, and Charon, diluting the awful tension in the room, _snorts_. Finally. Sil, despite himself, despite the odd atmosphere in the room right now, lets out a barking laugh, the anxiety in his body draining just a little. 

“That is hardly true,” Charon says, in the same stiff tones. 

“It’s true when you’re with me,” Sil replies firmly. He’s begun to release his death grip on the bedsheets, and his heart has stopped pounding so fast. He gives Charon a meaningful look. “Okay?”

Charon frowns at this, breaking eye contact, and only then does he seem to notice Crow, who’s standing awkwardly to the side with her hood still up, in the corner, staring at them, bewildered. He whips around, reaching automatically behind him for the gun that rests on the floor near Crow’s feet. She holds her hands up real fast, palms out, eyes shooting wider than saucers. 

“ _Notanenemy!_ ” she blurts, just as Sil lunges forward off the bed to grab Charon’s arm. Charon glances down at him sharply, his eyes wide and panicked. His body has gone completely rigid; every muscle in the arm Sil’s clutching seems to be tensed. 

“She’s supposed to be here. She’s a friend,” Sil explains in a rush. He lets go of his grip on Charon’s forearm and leans back onto the bed, breathing deep. “She’s the one… the one who, um, bought you. Remember?”

Charon squints at him for a moment before turning his eyes toward Crow, who seems to be profusely sweating as she dances from foot to foot like the floor is on fire. Her hands are still held defensively outward. Charon’s shoulders lose some of their tense hunch. He grunts. Sil takes this as some sort of affirmative and nods toward Crow, who stops moving. 

“Sorry to startle ya’, big guy,” she says with a toothy grin. Charon grunts again, then makes his way back to the armchair and drops bodily down into it. Crow hops away from him and crosses the room to join Sil on the bed. Sil snickers; she elbows him, hard, in the ribs. 

They all sit there for a moment, before Sil turns to Crow and whispers, “so, uh… where’s the money?” The thought had crossed his mind, once or twice, that Ahzrukhal was, you know, _dead_. So he could get his 2,000 caps back and then he wouldn’t be in debt to Gob anymore, and maybe Nova would fucking talk to him again. 

Crow squints at him for a second before her eyebrows shoot up in understanding. Sil is already worried before she even opens her mouth. “Oh,” she says. Then, “ _oh_.”

“ _What_?” Sil asks, his voice faint. He doesn’t entirely care that Charon can probably hear him. It’s not like they _stole_ Charon. They bought him together. It was efficient, frugal. Besides, Ahzrukhal wasn't around for Sil to be frightened of anymore; there was no longer any sort of risk for him. 

Crow shoots him a look. “I actually laid down the caps for the contract like, a week ago. Ahzrukhal… he said he needed to get his ducks in a row before I could, you know, have it. Um…” She pauses thoughtfully, then glances toward Charon, who isn’t looking at either of them as if it’s his sole earthly duty not to. “…he spent it, I assume. Wasn’t on his, y’know, body. After. I looked.”

Sil sits there in a sort of dumbstruck horror until Crow gives him a jovial slap on the back. “We’ll get the money to pay your friends back!”

Sil stares at her, blankly. She stares back, happily. 

“So, when are we headin’ out?” 

Sil catches the look on Charon’s face just after Crow says this and is unsurprised to see that he looks newly irritated. In fact, Sil feels quite the same way. 

* * *

“Mash or beans?”

Crow sits on one side of the fire, cradling their rations in her arms and looking expectantly at Sil. She’s learned, today, that Charon does not typically want to answer her, and so she’s given up in trying to include him. The guy doesn’t even eat, as far as she’s concerned, so this decision really has nothing to do with him. And, besides, he’s somewhere far enough away now that she can’t see him; he’d insisted on checking the perimeter of their camp, but she’s suspicious that he just wanted to get away from them. He’s been silent and broody all day, marching in front them with his gun drawn and not saying a single word.

They took off from Underworld somewhere around noon and got halfway to Megaton before Sil needed to take a break. Crow imagined she and Charon could’ve gone through the whole damn night without a break at all, but Sil was just so _delicate_. Tinkerers like him always are. They ended up making camp somewhere just past Dukov’s, though it skeeved Crow out to be so close to _that_ fucker, and here they were now, vaguely domestic with their battered tent and cooking fire. 

“Mash,” Sil says quietly, as he unlaces his boots and sets them gently to the side. He’s not looking at her, his eyes focused somewhere along the horizon. He reaches up his hand and lightly touches his breast pocket. 

As Crow cracks open the box of Instamash, she nods toward him. “Contract in there?” she asks. Sil nods, still not looking at her. She squints at him for another moment before turning away to dump the Mash into a rusty pot.

Crow recognizes Sil, but can’t seem to place him. It’s been gnawing at her since she met him months ago. The trouble with being a merc who takes any work they can get is that all the people you come across get tangled up with the others, and you can’t remember names or memories unless you focus _really_ hard for a _really_ long time. And she’s never been one to think too hard about things. 

After a long moment of silence, only punctuated by the soft gurgle of boiling water on the fire, Sil finally looks at Crow. His dark eyes are illuminated wholly by the fire and the moon, and he looks almost ghostly. “What’s your real name?” he asks, and it surprises her so much that she nearly flings the Mash out of the pot. 

“Uh,” she says intelligently, staring at him with her mouth agape. She supposes she should tell him. She knows him well enough; he doesn’t seem like someone who would use it against her or anything. But she hasn’t said it at all, not for almost ten years. It’s not something she really wants to utter casually over the fire. “Could I tell you later, maybe?”

Sil smiles in that kind way he does, and it warms her. “Sure,” he says, and then he’s back to staring dreamily into the distance. 

Charon comes back once they’ve both made quick work of the majority of the Mash and begun to get sleepy. Crow is lying on her back, staring up at the stars, and Sil has his arms wrapped around his knees, his stare buried in the fire. There’s just enough food left in the pot for Charon. 

“If you want it,” Sil says, gesturing toward the cold Mash. He begins to gather his stuff up and toss it into their tent. Charon doesn’t say anything, just sort of nods and stands beside the fire, his gun held in front of him. Sil gazes hopefully up at him for another moment before he retreats back into the tent, tugging his boots in after him and zipping the flaps shut. 

Crow sits up a little, propping herself up against her knapsack. The fire’s starting to go out, and the soft crackle makes her feel safe enough to try and engage Charon again. She looks over at him. “So.” 

Charon glances down at her, his eyes cold. He doesn’t anything, but he seems to be allowing her to continue. Or, at least, she interprets it that way. 

“You really hated that guy, huh?” she asks. She smiles, and the corners of her bright eyes crinkle. She knows she doesn't need to say his name; they both know, automatically, who she's talking about. The shot, when it happened, had shocked her, the sound knocking her half off the stool. The second one had been far more satisfying to hear. “I did too.”

Charon stares at Crow for a long, long moment without saying a word, and then he says, rigidly, “You did not know him like I did.”

“Can’t imagine how much worse he was behind closed doors,” Crow says solemnly, agreeably, not looking away from him. Charon stares at her for a moment longer before he relaxes his grip on his gun and lets it drop to one hand. 

“Sil’s a good kid,” she continues, tilting her head to the side. “He’s… inexperienced in some aspects of life ‘round here, ‘specially stuff like combat. But, uh, he’s real good with mechanical stuff. Real smart.” She grins. “An' he’s quick. Likes to hide. An’ you’re all out in the open all the time, scared of nothin’, so I think you two’d be a good team.”

Charon doesn’t say anything to this, but he does sink down to the ground to sit across from her, his gun propped up against his knees. It seems almost like a truce. 

She looks away from him, toward the moon. It’s full tonight, hanging fat and bright above them. They sit in silence like that until the fire dims completely. In the moonlight, she glances toward him. He’s still wide awake and alert, staring into the distance. 

“You don’t have to keep watch,” she says, and as soon as it’s out of her mouth she knows it’s a waste of words. Charon shakes his head. 

“No,” he says. He jerks his head toward the tent behind him, then looks at her. “Humans need sleep.”

Crow shrugs. “I mean, _you’re_ human. Technically. But whatever, fine.” She stands up and stretches her arms toward the sky. “’Night, then, big guy.”

And she ducks into the tent, leaving Charon alone with himself for what feels like the first time in a very long time. He drums his fingers against his gun, gazing into the twinkling coals of the firepit. He hasn’t really thought about shooting Ahzrukhal since it happened the day before. He hasn’t really thought about _anything_ since he did that. He doesn’t entirely want to start now. 

Charon eyes the pot of Instamash still resting against the remnants of the fire. He is hungry, though he’s been shoving the feeling away successfully for most of the day. He leans forward and grabs the pot, pulling it toward him. Balancing it on his legs, he stares apprehensively down at it. It looks alright enough. Even enticing. He hasn’t eaten much of anything in the past month, though, and he’s almost hesitant to try now. 

He picks up the spoon anyway and scoops out a generous mouthful, and he doesn’t even register than he’s taken a bite of it until all of the Mash has disappeared from the pot. He drops the spoon into it and it rings out with an empty, metallic _clang_. He feels... better. 

As he sets the pot back down on the ground, feeling somewhat unsettled, Charon hears a loud snore from within the tent. He knows, almost on instinct, that it belongs to Crow. He senses that Sil is still awake, though. Somehow. 

It’s always been like that with the contract-holders; he’s tethered to them, in a way, and can sense vaguely what it is that they’re feeling or doing. It’s more of an indicator of danger or not, allowing him to have the jump on an enemy, but sometimes it tells him things completely trivial. Like whether or not someone is asleep. He’s not much of a fan of it. He’d rather not know anything about the contract-holder at all. 

The tent unzips, ripping violently through Charon’s thoughts, and Sil pops his head out. Charon doesn’t even flinch, but he does glance up, briefly, from the fire. 

Sil’s hair is free of its bun, partially shrouding his face with dark waves. He looks over at Charon, then pulls himself out of the tent the rest of the way and quietly shuts it behind him. He sits down beside Charon, close enough that their shoulders are a sneeze away from touching, and he brings his knees up to his chin. He’s folded up so tiny, Charon could almost be fooled into thinking he _was_ small. 

Sil blinks slowly, his eyes trained on the ground. “Heard you and Crow,” he mutters. He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then, as if he’s been stewing on whether or not to admit it, he says, “I am pretty bad with combat. Scares me to leave my house.”

This doesn’t make much sense to Charon, considering Sil is almost always in Underworld. Why does he have a house? Sil glances over at him, and must catch the furrow of Charon’s brow, because he chuckles. “Though I basically live in Underworld most of the time, huh?”

Charon doesn’t look at him, feeling caught. Silence settles in, and Sil doesn’t try to fill it. 

They sit together until dawn begins to almost bleed through, and only then does Charon turn to him and say, in a voice he hopes does not at all resemble a compassionate one, “you must sleep.”

Sil just looks at him and shrugs. “I don’t really need sleep,” he says. He grins, then, and Charon finds himself musing, despite all his better judgments, that Sil has exceptionally straight teeth for someone in the Wasteland. It’s peculiar. Charon must be staring and not realizing it, though, because Sil’s smile slowly fades and he flushes pink, turning his face away. Charon blinks, breaking some sort of strange spell, and looks away, too. 

They watch the sun rise together and, somewhere along the way, Sil slumps over against him and falls asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took a while, sorry. :~( been agonizing over certain aspects of this story for a while-- i feel like charon pairings are always very very complicated, especially to write, but i like where it's headed thus far. let me know what you think!!!


	4. simmer

_Sil leans over the bowl of cold Brahmin scraps at his feet, frowning disdainfully. He’d rather have water. Any sort of liquid, really. He’s being wrung dry by the heat. Sweat pours off him in rivulets, his shoulder blades tensed together beneath the relentlessly beating sun. He breathes, but it doesn’t feel like breathing; it feels like drowning. It feels like he’s barely keeping afloat. It feels, if he will permit himself to be melodramatic for a moment, as if he is violently dying._

Silvio _, comes a voice, gruffly, from behind him. Sil glances up from his position squatting on the ground to see a monster staring down at him. Something with the vague shape of a man, bedecked in armor so vile and obnoxious-looking it could rival even a Raider’s most ambitious outfit. He’s wearing shoulder pads with bits of jagged metal poking out of them, and one of them catches the sunlight just right enough to blind Sil in one eye. He looks away. For some reason, he can’t remember the man’s name. He doesn’t exactly_ want _to remember, though._

Yes, _Sil answers. His voice sounds empty, distant. He can’t summon the energy to even sound a little bit petulant._

Come with me. _The man turns and walks away before Sil can properly see where he’s going, but he doesn’t need to see to know. He will never forget that room._

* * *

Sil sits up so quickly that he clocks Charon, hard, in the jaw, and Charon, having fallen asleep ( _again?_ ), doesn’t have enough sense to keep his mouth shut as he jolts awake. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses, reeling away from Sil as if bitten. Sil glances up at him, bashful and still looking exhausted. The bags beneath his eyes are very purple in the mid-noon sunlight, and he looks a bit red in the face. Charon curses himself inwardly; he should’ve made Sil go back in the tent as soon as he fell asleep. Smoothskins always burn so easily, he _knows_ this. 

But Sil’s redness fades after a moment and he is once again his pale self, leaving Charon confused as to why Sil didn’t seem to actually burn at _all_. He was only flushing with embarrassment at having accidentally assaulted Charon. Now, though, his brows are knitting together in… confusion? Anger? 

“Sorry,” Sil says, tiredly and almost as if he’s not sorry at all, and he looks away. He reaches up to wind his hair into a bun and he pins it up with something Charon cannot spot. It’s all in one very quick, practiced motion that Sil does this. 

Charon blinks stupidly at him and Sil, catching his eye, smiles softly. The twist of his brow has smoothed out, and Charon wonders if he even saw it at all. “You okay?” Sil asks. 

Charon comes back to himself long enough to grunt and hastily stand. Every joint in his body seems to cry out in cacophony. Sil lets out a wide yawn and joins him. He’s sweating, the thin material of his t-shirt clinging to his skin, but he seems unbothered by it. 

“Megaton’s only a few hours away,” Sil says, bending down to peek the upper half of his body in through the flaps of the tent. He lets out a little snort and returns, holding his knapsack in one arm. He tucks the flaps shut again and smiles up at Charon. “She’s spread eagle in there,” he explains around a laugh. 

Charon stares at him. 

“You are okay, though?” Sil asks, his smile fading. He seems to be interpreting Charon’s silence as something other than what it is. He hitches his knapsack up over one shoulder, not breaking eye contact with Charon. “I mean, you, like… you shot someone.”

 _This_ makes Charon laugh. “I have shot many people,” he says once it fades. Ahzrukhal dying by his hand had hardly made him break a sweat; killing him had been _rejuvenating_. 

Sil blinks at him, his dark brown eyes wide. His mouth slips back into a friendly smile. “I know,” he replies. The stare they share feels… intimate, in a strange way, and Charon is compelled to look away, but he doesn’t. Sil blinks, seeming to be surprised by Charon’s for once rapt attention. “Just… making sure.” 

Sil shrugs the straps of his bag more comfortably onto both shoulders, then leans over to peer, again, into the tent. “Get up,” Charon hears him say, his demand muffled and quiet. Charon watches him the entire time, not registering that his eyes have moved to stare rather determinedly at the pockets of Sil’s pants until Sil turns to catch him. Sil flushes up to the tips of his ears, but his confident smile doesn’t falter. He lifts his eyebrows in a questioning sort of way, not saying anything.

“The contract?” Charon manages to utter, feeling pathetic as he does so. 

Sil’s grin drops. “Oh!” he says, and then he does what Charon least expects, and reaches up into his _hair_. He carefully extracts something from the middle of the mass of curls on top of his head and holds it out to Charon. It’s the contract, still folded up into a neat square as Carol had left it. Charon shakes his head, refusing it. 

“I… needed to know where it was,” he says, too surprised to sound annoyed. Sil nods, his instant understanding sending a wave of unexpected relief through Charon’s body. Despite Sil’s clumsy, kind demeanor, Charon still expects to be punished. It confuses him _not_ to be, and it almost makes him resent Sil more. Why did he have to make everything _different_? 

Before Charon can have time to feel embarrassed about basically staring at Sil’s _crotch_ , Crow’s head pops out of the tent. Her blonde hair is partially out of its long braid, frizzing out all around her face, and she looks, frankly, a bit insane. 

“You guys start walking,” she says, her voice croaky. Charon can see a bit of dried drool trailing from the corner of her mouth. She gazes up at Sil, who seems to be resisting the urge to laugh at her. “I got a key to the house. I’ll clean up camp. Just need…” She yawns loudly. “…more sleep.”

“That is not safe,” Charon says automatically, before Sil can reply. Sil glances up at him, the wry smile he’s trying so desperately to hide widening ridiculously. 

“Charon’s right,” he says, looking at Crow, his voice trembling slightly from badly concealed laughter. He shrugs. 

Crow groans. “I don’t _care_ ,” she says sullenly, her eyebrows drawn together in irritation. She’s glaring at Charon, now, and Charon, not one to back down from a challenge, glares right back. This seems to shake her a bit, because her eyes twitch slightly and she looks over to Sil instead. 

Sil lets out a world-weary sigh and waves a hand at her. “Dude,” he says. “I’m not letting you get shot by a bunch of idiot Raiders just because you want to sleep for a few more minutes. C’mon.” He says it firmly and with his jaw set, and it nearly gives Charon mental whiplash to see his disposition change so quickly from amused to somewhat irritated. 

Crow groans even louder, but retreats obediently into the tent. There’s some shuffling around, and then she’s shoving forcefully out through the flaps with her knapsack and armor balancing precariously in her arms. Charon finds himself being plowed into, Crow’s head connecting with his stomach as she catapults herself out of the tent, and he stumbles backwards a step. Recollecting his footing, he swiftly snatches her chest piece off the top of the pile, then her boots, then her knapsack, balancing it all rather effortlessly against his chest and leaving her only with an undershirt hanging from one arm. She stares up at him, as if unable to decide whether or not to be mad about him helping her. He’s not entirely happy to be doing it, personally. It just sort of happened. 

“Thanks,” she says, in a begrudging sort of way, and she stands up fully. She looks expectantly at Sil, and he lets out a laugh, his eyes crinkling. 

“You two,” he says, glancing up at Charon, who is scowling openly at him now, “are gonna be great friends. I’m absolutely sure of it.”

* * *

Sil doesn’t exactly want to return home, and the giant ant corpses baking in the sun just outside the entrance seem like a bad omen, reinforcing his feelings of anxiety. He steps carefully over them, Charon and Crow trailing after him, Crow muttering something about the cleanup crew around here being piss poor. _What cleanup crew?_ Sil thinks. 

They step through the gates to Megaton and Sil is unsurprised to see Simms lurking just within, his hat tipped into his eyes to block out the setting sun streaming in after them. 

“Silvio,” he greets warmly, his face nearly cracking in half under the weight of the grin that graces it. He steps forward, throwing out his arms, and he reels Sil in for a hug. Sil lets it happen, grimacing throughout the entire process. Simms gives him a good, long squeeze and then holds him out at arm’s length, looking him over, like a father. This specific interaction makes something in Sil’s gut twist painfully. He misses his father. “All good? No cuts to patch up? No broken limbs?”

Sil swallows, feeling the blood rush to his ears. This is embarrassing. He doesn’t want Charon to think he’s a _total_ weakling. “All good,” he confirms, trying to smile confidently. This seems to satisfy Simms because he, finally, releases him. Sil stumbles backward a little from the sudden lack of support, bumping into something solid, and then a warm hand is on his shoulder, steadying him. He glances up to see Charon staring down at him, his expression unreadable. He lets go of him and looks away. 

“…And who’s this?” Sil turns back around to see Simms staring behind him, toward Charon. His smile is still there, though it seems a fraction less genuine than it had been seconds before. Sil curses himself in his head. He’d been hoping to just sort of… sneak Charon in here, without anyone noticing, which, in retrospect, was a stupid fucking plan. “Big fella, huh?”

“Uh,” Sil says. 

“This is Charon!” Crow pipes up from behind him, her voice chipper. Simms turns his eye toward her, and Sil finally feels like he has a moment to relax. “He’s workin’ for Sil now. A body guard, kinda.”

Simms squints at her, as if suspicious, then turns his eye back to Charon. “Uh huh,” he says stiffly. His smile has completely dissolved. Sil is slowly coming to the realization that his breathing is growing shallow, and he’s getting very warm. “Well, keep him out of trouble. Alright?” Simms is looking at Sil again, now, and Sil can feel his fingers twitching to tap out a comforting rhythm, can feel the anxiety ramping up inside of him. It’s happening very quickly, all of a sudden. 

He needs to get home. He’s quite nearly reached the end of his rope. The nightmare he’d had this morning… it still lingers, cold, in his mind. Other things linger there, too, because of the dream, things he’d rather not think about, things that send him spiraling. And now Simms is being critical of Charon. Not to mention that Gob and Nova still hate him and—

Sil nods mechanically, unable to form the words, his mind suddenly blank, and he can hear Crow saying something, but it’s muffled, faraway—and then Simms is letting them pass, and Sil rushes through town, not caring whether or not Charon and Crow can keep up with him. Crow knows where to go. But he can’t wait for them, not when the world is slowly tinting red and he can feel the tears burning right behind his eyes. It’s happening so fast. It always happens so fast. 

He reaches the front door of the shack and fumbles wildly with his keys, but before he can find the right one, Crow is there by his side as if she’d been running with him all along. She gently guides her own key into the lock and turns it. She pushes open the door and he tumbles in headfirst to end up standing, his back them, in the middle of the living room. The world twists around him. He feels as if he is seeing everything through a pinhole. 

“Sil?” Crow says quietly, her voice breaking through the phantom cotton in his ears, and she grabs onto his shoulder. This is a mistake, one she’s made before but has never learned from. He whips around to face her, recognizing now that he’s hyperventilating, his breath ripping out of him in heaving gasps, and he grabs her wrist in one hand, flings it away. He can see that Charon still stands in the doorway, staring at them, but he can’t see the expression on his face. His vision is too blurred. Crow swallows, nodding manically. “Okay. Do you need--?”

“ _No_ ,” Sil grits. His throat is unbearably dry, and his words come out rough as sandpaper. He takes a backward step, stumbles slightly. Tears are streaming down his cheeks, but he isn’t consciously crying, just breathing loudly and unevenly. 

Crow… she looks so different now through his frantic tears, so much like someone else. She has the same small, elusive build as someone he once knew: the person who saved him from the slave encampment all those years ago. The person who’d broken into his cage and given him a curious look; who’d taken his hand and held it in both of theirs, whispered to him that he would be just fine. They’d get him out of here. 

And then Sil is pulled into a vivid glimpse of what came before his savior: a shiny observation table; the swish of a pristine, white doctor’s coat; the glittering of the man’s teeth, so impossibly pearlescent, catching the fluorescent light of the lab. _The lab_. 

Crow stands there, tense, wondering what she should do, like she always does when he gets this way. But then Sil’s entire face is alight with utter, raw panic, and he turns and shoots away from them, up the stairs to his bedroom. He slams the door behind him, and the whole shack trembles. 

Crow lingers for a moment, staring up at the closed door. Her breath is consciously even and deep. Whenever Sil has one of… these, whatever they are, she must take the time to remind _herself_ to breathe. It startles her, whenever he does this. She’s almost always unable to comfort him because of how nervous it makes her. 

After a few long seconds, she remembers that Charon is there, and she spins around. He, too, is staring up at the door, his face carefully blank. Charon blinks, then looks over at her. She swears she can see something in his eyes, something like dawning recognition. 

She gestures behind her, toward the stairs. “Do you--?” She pauses, feeling foolish, but she has no other choice. “I mean, could you calm him down? You’re…” She swallows nervously. “You’re fucked up too, probably, right?”

Charon frowns at her, and for a moment she’s worried that she’s overstepped some sort of boundary, and she’s about to get the ever-living shit beaten out of her. But then he shakes his head. “I have nothing to help him,” he says. “Nothing more than what he has shown me.”

“…shown…you?” she repeats dumbly. Then, her eyes widen. “Oh, right. He told me about that.”

Charon’s frown deepens. “He told you?” He didn’t want to ask, but it comes out anyway, sounding angrier than he imagined it would. Crow’s eyes widen in alarm. 

“I… he tells me everythin’,” she says by way of explanation. She doesn’t know what else she can say. But Charon doesn’t seem like he’s going to strangle her; he just looks a bit annoyed. He glances back up at Sil’s door, then to her. 

They seem to understand each other, for a moment. “Don’t knock,” Crow says, her voice soft. Her eyes are watery. “Just go in.”

Charon ascends the stairs, the inhuman pull of the contract tugging him forward, thrumming anxiously within his body. But it isn’t just that. It’s far more than that, in a way he cannot describe. He reaches the door and stands there for a moment.

“It helps if you just swing the door open,” Crow says from the landing. “Take him by surprise.” This does not seem like sound advice, but Charon does it anyway, reaching for the knob, twisting, and throwing the door open. 

Sil lays on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move at all, when Charon comes into the room. He seems to be… faraway. His breathing has calmed slightly, but he looks far from alright, his face gaunt and pale, his eyes rimmed with an angry red. His hair is spread out and tangled, like a strange sort of halo. 

The room is full of personality, torn posters and discarded Nuka Cola bottles and stacks of precariously balanced books. Clothes drool out of a crooked dresser that has the character of something homemade. In one corner sits a computer spinning lines of bright-green code like a spider frantically building its web; and in another teeters something that resembles a mini water purifier, a clear canister bubbling atop a box bedecked with mismatching dials. 

Charon is reminded, looking around Sil’s room, that Sil is a scavenger. He never could have guessed, though, how much the smoothskin _really_ scavenged, and how intelligent he must be to accomplish what he does with it all; nearly everything he owns looks to be hand-built and found. A thought crosses Charon’s mind: is Charon one of these things, something Sil has found and taken home? And what does it mean if he is?

Charon stands in front of the door, not knowing what to do at all, his eyes roving across the room, taking it all in and understanding none of it. He doesn’t altogether want to be here, but he feels as if he has a favor to return, and for once, he is in a position to return it. He has something that, if Sil’s word is true, and remains true, somewhat resembles free will. 

Sil turns his head, slowly, so that he can look at Charon, and it’s like looking into the eyes of a ghost. “You don’t have to,” he says, hoarsely. His voice sounds terribly small. He swallows, and it seems to be with visible effort. “You really don’t.”

Charon shuts the door gently behind him. They stare at each other for a moment before Sil turns away, looking wary. He sighs, and closes his eyes, like he’s succumbing to a terrible fate. 

Charon crosses the room and comes to rest on the very edge of Sil’s mattress, his back to Sil’s splayed out body. He sits there, not knowing what the hell he’s supposed to be doing and regretting even coming up here at all, when there’s a shifting movement behind him, and then Sil is crawling around to Charon’s side. He sits up beside Charon, sending his long legs out to dangle off the edge of the bed. He’s sitting very close to Charon again, close enough for their shoulders to touch, and Charon wonders whether or not this kid knows anything about personal space or if he just goes around bumping affectionately into near-strangers all the time. 

It’s so quiet in the room now that Charon can hear Sil swallow. Charon’s looking determinedly straight ahead, hoping that perhaps just his presence will be enough to calm Sil down, but then the bed starts shaking, and when Charon turns toward Sil, to see if he knows _why_ it’s shaking, he sees that Sil is weeping. He’s sobbing so hard and so desperate that no sound is coming out of his mouth at all. 

“Ah—” Charon blinks, holding his hand halfway out to Sil without knowing what his intention is to even do with it. But Sil reaches out and grabs it tightly with his own, and it is as if all the warmth in the room centralizes in their touch. 

Sil does not seem to notice, his head bent toward Charon as his body wracks with violent sobs. His hair is falling out of its bun, little tendrils sticking to his sweaty temples. Charon briefly wonders if the contract is still tucked away there, and if maybe he should fish it out, so it doesn’t get lost in all of the…chaos. Sil looks up again before Charon can carry this action out, however, and they stare at one another. Sil’s face is blotchy and red, so different, so far removed from how it usually shines; he looks devastated. 

The anxious pull of the contract hums in the back of Charon’s head, getting louder and louder with every second that he watches Sil crying. _Danger_ , it whispers. 

“Breathe,” Charon says. It comes out hoarse and abrupt. Sil squints at him, momentarily too confused to continue panicking. 

“What?” he says, raspy. 

“You must breathe,” Charon says again. He is not used to making demands. He squeezes Sil’s hand; this is how people comfort others, right? “Feel it in your stomach,” he continues quietly, and Sil seems mesmerized, his eyes sparkling with tears building. “In through your nose and out through your mouth. Slow.” When Sil does not act, Charon demonstrates for him by breathing in long through his nostrils and then blowing it out through his mouth with exaggerated care. 

Sil mimics him almost perfectly, never breaking eye contact, and Charon can already see that his face is losing some of its angry flush. Sil does it again and, as he breathes out, his grip on Charon’s hand loosens. They sit like that, mindfully breathing together, until Sil’s eyes begin to flutter closed, and it looks as if he’s putting up a valiant effort to stay awake. 

“You need sleep,” Charon says, releasing his hand. Sil’s eyes pop open again, and this time they stay open. He looks frightened again, and Charon curses him in his head. These fucking fragile humans, always constantly feeling _everything_ all at once. A whirlwind of emotions he wants no part of. Charon lost most of the annoying emotion a long time ago; eventually and with enough trauma, it simply wears away. 

“No, I can’t,” Sil says in a rush. Charon frowns at him, not understanding at all. 

“You cannot sleep?” he repeats, his voice taking on a more sarcastic tone. 

Sil smiles apologetically, and it lacks all of the luster it normally has. He reaches up and tucks a stray curl behind his ear, then looks down at his hands in his lap. “I have nightmares,” he says softly. “I had one last night. It—” He lets out a huff of breath, then looks back up to Charon. 

Charon nods minutely. “I understand,” he says. 

“I think I could sleep, if…” Sil pauses to chew on his bottom lip. Charon watches him, waits for a command. He craves a command. He has been far too free these past few days, and a part of him utterly loathes it. A large part of him, an overwhelming part. “Could you stay here with me, Charon?”

Charon nods automatically. Even though it is not an explicit command, he needs to obey, to return to how his life has always been. All this freedom has begun to make him feel jittery. 

Sil smiles brightly, and he looks almost like his old self again. Charon resists the urge to smile back, or at least he attempts to, but the change pleases him so much that the smallest quirk of his lips shines through. 

Sil scrambles backward and tucks himself under the covers, squirming and making little grunting noises as he gets comfortable. Charon watches him over his shoulder. Sil yanks the blankets up to his chin and stares at Charon.

“Well?” he says.

Charon’s brows press together. “What?”

Sil reaches out from beneath his blankets and pats the spot on the bed next to him. “Get comfy,” he says with a cheeky grin. He reaches up into his hair and pulls out the contract, then turns away from Charon to place it gently on the nightstand. 

Charon is frozen, suddenly, with discomfort. This reminds him, ever so barely, of certain masters before Sil who’d take advantage of him for more… carnal purposes. He swallows.

Sil glances back at him, looking surprised to see him still perched on the edge of the bed. He frowns. “Are you okay?”

“I will not sleep with you,” Charon says quickly, sharply, and Sil’s eyebrows shoot up. “Not… not like—"

“ _Oh_.” Sil sits up a little, the blankets falling away from his chin. He reaches out to touch Charon lightly on the arm and Charon visibly flinches. “I… that’s not what I want. I’m not going to—to do that sort of thing with you, I mean, un— _um_ —” Sil pauses abruptly, as if to catch himself from saying something. He resolutely clamps his mouth shut, cheeks reddening slightly. 

“I am sorry,” Charon says, misinterpreting Sil's embarrassment as something entirely borne from his own rash assumption. They stare at one another for a couple of seconds. “I should not have—”

“No. No, you’re… you’re okay, I can’t imagine what kind of shit you went through.” Sil tilts his head to the side, his expression that of unmistakable pity. Charon hates it when people look at him that way. 

Charon, before he entirely knows what he’s doing, shifts himself backward on the bed until he’s settled against the headboard beside Sil. He sits on top of the blankets, with his legs stretched out and his facial expression drawn into that of stubborn passivity. 

Sil watches him for a moment before turning away. They say nothing more to each other, and eventually Sil sinks back beneath the covers again, turning to his side and snuggling his face into his pillow. Soon, soft snores escape his mouth. Charon looks down at him, a glance meant to be fleeting and cautionary, and finds that he cannot look away as quickly as he’d like to. 

* * *

Somewhere around two in the morning, Sil stirs. His eyes feel woefully dry, and his arm is cramping up from how long it was pinned beneath his torso while he was sleeping. He props himself up against his pillow and glances over to where Charon should be, fully expecting to see him missing. But he is there, awake and sitting in the exact same position, his open eyes catching the light of the moon. He turns to look at Sil.

“It is late,” he says. 

“Sure is,” Sil confirms, smiling. He sits up fully and faces Charon. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“Ghouls do not need nearly as much sleep as humans,” Charon recites dully. “I would expect you to know this.”

Sil chuckles. “You know, you’re funny when you’re not being all closed-off,” he says. It comes out like a whisper, like he’s sharing a secret, and he feels quietly elated. He loves to be awake late at night, especially with someone else. It feels as if you're the only two people in the world. He reaches up to rub some of the sleep from his eyes.

Charon stares at him for a moment, as if contemplating something, and then he says, “I have had a long time to hone my humor. I would hope that I am funny by now.”

Sil snorts, to staunch the loud and embarrassing laughter that threatens his lungs, but then it spills out of him anyway. He dissolves completely into ceaseless giggles, and Charon watches him the entire time. Perhaps it is a trick of the moonlight, but Sil can swear he sees Charon smiling, _really_ smiling at him. 

A crack of thunder interrupts his laughter and Sil stops, eyes wide. They both turn to look out the window, and they’re greeted with a dirty green fog rolling itself out over the moon, and little crackles of lightning spreading tendrils across the sky. Charon shifts a little, opens his mouth to say something, but Sil is hopping out of the bed with a wide grin on his face. He turns to Charon, his eyes flashing, and he whispers excitedly, “ _radstorm._ ”

Before Charon can stop him, Sil is hurrying to the window and pushing it open. Just as he throws one leg over the edge and begins to duck his head outside, does Charon stand from the bed and say, loudly, “stop.” The weight of the command leaves his lungs and he, for a moment, panics. He is getting too comfortable; he cannot tell other people what to do. 

Sil turns around to stare at him and his smile falters. “What?” he asks, looking forlorn. Half of his body is still hanging out the window, and his hair is already growing wet from rain. 

“Radstorms are dangerous,” Charon continues. He feels insane for having to even say it. How has this human lasted so long without knowing something so crucial? “You could die. You could get sick.”

Sil ducks his head back into the room, but his leg is still dangling outside. It would be comical if Charon wasn’t so distressed. 

“They’re not bad,” Sil says, and Charon, who is too troubled to try to hide it, shoots him a look of disbelief and annoyance. Sil laughs in the face of it, as would be expected. “Not for _me_ , anyway. Listen—” He finally steps fully back into the bedroom and faces Charon. Silhouetted against the sickly green of the storm outside, Sil looks… mystical, almost. Like some sort of otherworldly being who does not belong. “Storms don’t bother me. They… they reenergize me.”

 _Like a ghoul_ , Charon thinks. No, no, that’s impossible. Humans cannot handle radiation this high, let alone _thrive_ from it. And Sil is certainly a human. 

Instead of what Charon expects to come out of his own mouth, such as _what the fuck are you even talking about_ or _you’re full of shit, close the window_ , he says, faintly, “how?”

Sil shrugs with infuriating nonchalance. “It’s just… been this way. Ever since—” He blinks, catching himself. “For the past seven years, or so.” He looks at Charon for a moment, before turning away to gaze out the window. “I love these storms,” he says, in a whisper meant only for himself. Then, “you can come out with me if you want, but I’m going to the roof. You can’t stop me.”

Sil ducks out the window and disappears almost immediately. Charon strides across the room and pops his head out the window, craning his neck around so he can look up. There, already peering at him from over the edge of the roof, is Sil. He’s grinning. 

“C’mon,” he says, softly, and Charon, still seeking a command so desperately, obeys. He climbs out the window and up the side of the building with little effort. The raindrops that hit his body instantly send shocks of pleasing energy throughout his body. Sil offers a hand to help him up onto the roof, but Charon pulls himself up without taking it, suddenly eager to soak up as much of the storm as he can. He hasn’t been outside during a radstorm in a very long while. 

They sit side by side on the roof, Sil humming a cheery tune and Charon feeling very much as if his contract has been purchased by a total maniac. But at the same time, he is as close to content as he remembers ever being. Maybe having a maniac as a master won’t be entirely bad, this time. 

Sil leans back onto his elbows, closes his eyes, and smiles into the downpour. Charon turns to watch him, exhaustion briefly clouding his ability to continue hating him. But it isn’t just that. Charon doesn’t hate him at all, not anymore. Not for a long while. Perhaps never. As he stares, he can already see, even in the near-darkness, the life returning to Sil’s face. He’s not insane—he’s right. Radstorms don’t affect him, at least, not in the way they should. 

Charon turns away and leans back too, pressing his face up toward the sky. The rain, when it hits his ruined skin, burns pleasantly. He feels suspended, almost, in bliss. He is so at peace that when Sil speaks, he does not jump; Sil’s voice merely winds itself into the sound of the rain, into the distant, comforting music of thunder, as if it is a part of the storm. 

“It’s like another world,” Sil says. There is the sound of movement, and then warmth against Charon’s side. “A better one.”

Charon glances over at Sil to see him leaning against him. Sil isn’t looking at him, but into the distance. The lightning dances behind the clouds, casting them in an eerie glow. Charon can smell the natural tang of rain in Sil’s knotted hair, can feel the dampness of his clothes flush against his own. It doesn’t scare him, this contact. But it does confuse him terribly, especially when Sil finally does look up at him, and all of his thoughts seem to fall away as a result. 

Rainwater tumbles off Sil’s curls and down his forehead. There’s one droplet just at the tip of his nose that Charon is almost compelled to brush away. His shirt hangs heavy from his thin body, revealing jutting collarbones and the dark moles that adorn them. 

Charon has never seen anyone so radiant in his life. Sil and his effortless, unique beauty hits Charon like a wave, like the suffocating white foam of an ocean long absent.

“You and I are really alike,” Sil murmurs finally. He smiles, but it isn’t as garish a grin as it usually is; it’s softer, secretive. He looks away again, then rests his head back against the hollow of Charon’s shoulder. 

It doesn’t take very long at all for Charon to fall into a deep sleep, but not before he hears Sil say, just on the edge of his consciousness, “I’m glad I found you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :~) my soft boi and my angry boi finally lowkey cuddling hehehe


	5. flame

_If I was born as a blackthorn tree,_

_I’d want to be felled by you,_

_held by you,_

_fuel the pyre of your enemies._

It takes only a few days for them to fall into a comfortable routine with one another. Charon makes a habit of cleaning everyone’s weapons, sweeping them away without asking and replacing them minutes later like some sort of bizarrely charitable ghost. And Sil, ever one to keep constantly busy, flits about the shack like a manic housewife, dropping hot plates of food in front of everyone and washing huge loads of laundry in the bathtub upstairs. He seems to be keeping himself preoccupied on purpose, because sometimes when Charon catches his eye in the small pauses between his chores, there is a raw anxiety in his stare, one Charon can immediately recognize. But then Sil turns away, and the connection is severed. 

Crow, on the other hand, has hardly contributed to the household at all, but she does engage Charon in conversation regularly. She seems to be taking a liking to him, despite his clear distaste for her. He thinks this is rather an unfortunate turn of events. 

“So,” she says one night around a huge mouthful of seared Brahmin, “how bad was Ahzrukhal, huh? Let’s talk shit.” She leans toward him, grinning wickedly, and tosses one of her braids carelessly over one shoulder. Charon shifts himself further down the couch without saying anything. 

“ _Crow_.” Sil peers into the living room from in the kitchen, frowning. Both Charon and Crow turn to look at him. 

His hair is strange today, like nothing Charon has ever seen on a man in the Wasteland: half of it is knotted up on the top of his head, while the rest flows unrestricted over his shoulders, bar a few small plaits scattered throughout. Somehow, though, it doesn’t look bad on him. It almost looks completely normal, attractive, even. If Charon cared about that sort of thing. Which, he doesn’t. 

Sil’s dark eyes flicker over to Charon and his frown jumps instantly into a grin. “You don’t have to tell her anything, you know. Too nosy for her own good.”

“ _Right here_!” Crow snaps indignantly, but Sil is already disappearing back into the kitchen, his hair swishing out behind him. Charon turns away toward his own plate of food, feeling inexplicably warmer. He doesn’t have time to be confused by it, though, because Crow is already talking again. 

“ _So_ ,” she presses, raising her eyebrows. She gestures toward him with the hand holding a forkful of meat and Instamash, and a glob of the Mash flies off of it and hits him square in the chin. He wipes it off with a grimace.

“I do not think you want to hear it,” he says, glaring at her. She nods, though, and smiles brightly, seemingly undeterred.

“I _for sure_ wanna hear it,” she responds, setting her fork down on her plate, untouched, to make a point. Charon continues to stare at her in disbelief. But an angry part of him is rearing up in his chest, something vengeful and cruel. 

“Fine,” he says, his tone of voice scathing. “Would you like for me to start at the beginning, or should I just pick any random point in time?”

Crow reclines back on the couch and stretches her legs out. She presses her toes unapologetically into Charon’s leg and grins at him. “Surprise me.”

Charon knows what he _wants_ to tell her, to get back at her for thinking she has the right to talk to him about this: Ahzrukhal would make a habit of sending him out to steal people. To steal women, or even girls, for something that Charon knew nothing about. He would ferry them through The Ninth Circle at the smallest hours of night when the bar was basically closed, and then Ahzrukhal’s claws would appear to drag them into the darkness, and Charon would obediently watch them vanish. Knowing that they were as good as dead, and that he had put them there. 

He still remembered the name of the smallest one—Ren. It had been a strange name, but weren’t they all, now? He’d liked it. He’d almost told her so, but she had put up such a fight he hardly could have. She’d been valiant, and angry as ever. He’d handed her over with so much guilt, and he still felt it now, lingering and blighted like disease. He wishes he could have caught a glimpse of what she had looked like, but Ahzrukhal always insisted on covering the girls’ heads with burlap sacks. He wonders, now, what that little spitfire, Ren, could be up to. He hopes against hope that he did not doom her to death, or anything worse. 

But, no, he can’t tell Crow that. He doesn’t want to speak it aloud. Because he _knows_ he doomed Ren. 

“Once,” Charon says instead, his voice tight, “he sent me to kill someone. Ex-lover, very annoying. A quick decision for him." Crow draws her knees up to her chin and Charon relaxes slightly, grateful to have space to himself again. "She had been holing away in Dukov’s for a while, much to his… anger.” He almost smiled at the memory of Ahzrukhal, displeased and misled. “I traveled there, but she was gone already. She had left a note.” This time, he did allow a smile. “ _Hey Hal-- Fuck you. Love, the bitch who stole your stash. Oops._ ”

Crow lets out a loud, ugly snort at this. “I _love_ her,” she says, leaning further toward him. He glances toward her. She's hanging onto his every word like a child being told a fairytale. He no longer wants to tell her the rest of the story, but she is staring at him so intensely he finds himself not wanting to disappoint her. 

“I returned to Underworld with the note,” he says, then takes a deep breath and looks away, “and handed it over to him.” He closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, his surroundings seem ever so slightly blurred. The words come out of his mouth, fast, like if he lingers too long on them they will burn his lips. “He flayed one of my hands, before he was convinced I had not forged the note myself.”

A beat of mortified silence. “Why would he think that?” Crow asks, in nearly a whisper, but Charon doesn’t have the chance to answer. There is a sharp, shaky intake of breath from behind him, and then the clean scent of Sil wafts very nearby. 

“Your hand?”

Suddenly, Sil is right beside him, perching himself on the arm of the couch that Charon is leaning against. He bends down and scoops up Charon’s hands, scrutinizing them carefully. Then, his face blanches. 

“I don’t know how I didn’t notice,” he murmurs, dropping Charon’s left hand and turning the right one, the destroyed one, over in his own. His thumb passes softly along Charon’s palm, then up to his fingertips. Charon glances up at Sil to see that he’s no longer staring at the hand, but at him. Charon pulls his hand out of Sil’s grip and lays them both determinedly in his lap. He looks down at them.

“My body already looks flayed,” he says, and it has a bitter sort of bite to it, one he had not intended.

“Oh, quit that,” Crow says from the other end of the couch. He’d nearly forgotten that she was there. Sil straightens up, as if he’d forgotten, too. “You’re the hunkiest ghoul I’ve ever seen, and that’s a fact.” She smiles encouragingly. 

Sil lets out a laugh, settling comfortably against the arm of the chair and consequently sinking further toward Charon. The atmosphere in the room lightens, slightly. Sil begins to talk about Gob in a low voice, and Crow is responding in kind. And Charon sits between them, staring down at his hands. His mind is blank, suddenly. 

He would like to move, to put a more appropriate distance between himself and Sil, but something is stopping him and he can’t seem to name it. He’s… being useful to the contract-holder, keeping him safe. He doesn’t feel as weird, then, by staying there, with Sil’s arm pressed up against his. But he’s still having some trouble trying not to think about how, unlike any other instance with any other master, the contact between he and Sil doesn’t seem to be making him uncomfortable at all. 

* * *

Crow leaves, occasionally, to do mercenary work. They’re quick and dirty jobs, and she always comes flouncing through the door with a huge grin on her face afterward. This doesn’t bother Sil, but he can tell that it bothers Charon. 

Sil may not know his new friend all that well—they’ve hardly spoken to one another candidly, and most of their interactions are wordless agreements, if anything—but he can tell that Charon is growing restless. He cleans his gun at least five times a day, and does the same for Sil’s, even though Sil never uses the damn thing. 

He’s picked up a strange hobby, too: reading. 

It’s a Wednesday night and Sil’s got flour all across his front and in his hair, but he’s grinning like a loon. He’s made a _cake_. A fucking _cake_. He stares down at the flat little dessert and can’t stop giggling to himself. It looks horrific—probably tastes just as bad, too—but he made a cake and he’s so very proud of himself. He takes his apron off and shoots into the living room to tell Charon what he’s done, but he stops halfway through the archway. 

Sil is, perhaps, the only person in all of Megaton to own a book. Multiple books. A teetering stack of them, which he keeps beside the couch. It’s his prized accomplishment, this collection, and it comes from pilfering so many libraries and stores over the years, hunting through mold and dust to pluck an only slightly burnt up novel and to feel as if the world has grown a bit brighter as a result. It’s like nothing else. So, when he sees Charon halfway through one of his favorites, at first he gets upset. 

Charon sits against the corner of the couch with his legs stretched out, reading intently from a copy of _Frankenstein_ beaten completely to shit from radiation and age, but mostly from Sil’s relentless love. Not only is Sil feeling annoyed that someone is handling his favorite book, but… he’s confused, too. Charon looks so borderline normal, here, reading in the living room. He seems almost comfortable. 

Sil watches Charon, whose eyes move so quickly, quicker than he’s ever seen someone read before, and Sil waits six pages before he steps fully into the room to make his presence known. Charon’s head immediately snaps up and he shuts the book. 

“I am sorry,” he says stiffly. His eyes are swimming with fear, and Sil understands why: he’s standing in the doorway, glaring at Charon as if Charon has just taken a big bite out of his newborn child. He schools his face back into something resembling a smile and holds up his hands.

“No!” he says, stepping toward the couch. He lowers his hands. “I’m not… you’re fine. I’m just—” He shakes his head and laughs, awkwardly. “I’ve never, uh, seen anyone read before, around here. Especially not that fast.”

Charon stares at him for a long moment before the apprehension finally seems to drain from his eyes. He glances down to the book in his lap, then back up to Sil. “You were upset,” he says. 

Sil comes around to sit on the couch arm beside Charon. He sighs, reaches up to whirl his hair into a bun. “I… was, but not for—not because you were reading. It was stupid, and, anyway, you can do whatever you want,” he says. His voice is very quiet, and he feels like a complete idiot, getting so possessive over a ratty old book. “It’s just my favorite.”

Charon looks over at him. “It is very good,” he agrees, in a voice that is just as soft as Sil’s. He seems to realize that this was an admission of feeling, and his face stiffens up into a determined sort of grimace. “I should have waited for your permission.” His eyes close, and he turns his head away. 

Sil tucks his hair away and leans back against the couch, his expression pensive. He gazes at Charon for a long time, wondering if he should bother in his continued insistence of Charon's pseudo-freedom. He decides against it. 

“How old are you?” he asks, and he looks away before Charon can open his eyes again. For a ghoul, it’s a very private question. Sil knows this. 

Charon moves slightly, perhaps to accommodate Sil’s close presence, and then sighs. “I do not remember,” he says. “I know it is… over one hundred.”

Sil glances toward him, his eyes wide. “Were you… before…?” He can’t get it all out, but Charon seems to pick up on what he’s trying to say. He shrugs. 

“Maybe,” he says. He looks up at him. The stare they share now is just as raw and unforgivingly intimate as it was the night they went to watch the radstorm from the roof. Sil swallows. 

“No wonder you can read so well,” he whispers. “You’ve been doing it forever.”

Charon opens his mouth to say something, then seems to think the better of it and closes it. He’s still staring at Sil, unabashedly, and it almost makes Sil want to look away. He’s usually not the one to look away first. 

“Why are you covered in white powder?” Charon asks after a moment, startling Sil out of his anxious trance. 

“Uh,” Sil says, blinking. “I, um, I made a cake.”

“You made a mess,” Charon says, his voice serious. 

Sil laughs, turning his gaze sheepishly down to his lap. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve always been that way. My dad, uh, he—he used to… to call me a cyclone.” His voice hitches just a bit. He glances back toward Charon. 

“Where is he now?” Charon asks. The expression on his face is a conflicted one: he looks as if he thinks he has overstepped his boundaries again, but—there’s something else, some sort of concerned curiosity in his eyes. Sil exhales a slow breath. 

“I haven’t talked to him since I got out,” Sil says in a whisper. He had meant it to be a fib, something reassuring. _Oh, I see him every week. He works in town. He didn’t abandon me to the vault. He didn’t leave me there to die_. 

The air that passes between them seems to vibrate. 

“Out?” Charon repeats. His bright eyes are trained determinedly on Sil’s face. 

“Of the vault.” It’s out of Sil’s mouth before he even has the thought to lie, but he shouldn’t be surprised, as that isn’t going well for him so far anyway. 

Charon stares at him. “A vault,” he repeats again, his normally impassive voice betraying something like awe. Sil can only nod wordlessly and Charon, destroying the weird, quiet moment they were having, snorts. “No wonder you are so strange.”

Sil blinks at him for a moment, not comprehending, and then he laughs, too. 

“ _Hey_ ,” he says, indignant, and he socks Charon softly on the arm. “I’m not any stranger than all the people out here, alright?”

Charon makes an affirmative sound at the back of his throat, but the small smile betraying his lips conveys it as a sarcastic sort of sound, too. Sil’s laughter begins to die, and his grin softens up into a bemused, gentle smile. They look at one another, like that, for a long time. And then, suddenly, Charon is reaching up toward Sil’s face. 

Sil freezes, not knowing what to do, but Charon only passes a thumb, quick and light, across his cheek. He pulls it away, holds it in front of Sil, for him to see, but Sil can’t focus on it. There’s a vivid streak of warmth spreading across his face, and it’s like nothing he’s ever felt before. 

“Flour,” Sil says numbly, glancing down at Charon’s thumb. He looks back up to meet Charon’s eye. “Thanks.”

“You should be careful,” Charon says, dropping his hand to his lap. He looks away, but Sil reaches out before he knows what he’s doing, and he touches the side of Charon’s face, turning it back toward him. He smiles again. He feels like he’s in a dream. 

His hand lingers there, beside Charon’s cheek, as he tries to remember what the hell he was planning to do, and Charon opens his mouth, like he’s going to say something. Sil can only guess it’s some recitation of his contract, something about inappropriate touching invalidating it, but his panicked thoughts are interrupted when someone comes tumbling loudly through the front door, cursing and banging about like an exceptionally clumsy Deathclaw. 

Sil instantly jumps away from Charon, and, as a result, he falls right off the side of the couch. He hits the ground hard enough to send ringing pain through his elbow, but he twists around to see who’s at the door anyway. 

“You guys—” There’s a scraping sound against the floor. “—won’t _believe_ —” A thump. “—the day I’ve had.” The undeniable crash of Sil’s Vault Boy display falling over for the third time this week. His bleary eyes find Crow as her small form lumbers through the door. She’s holding the end of a huge sack in one hand and, crouching down, picking up Sil’s Vault Boys with the other. Sil exhales and sits up. He’s so annoyed that he’s forgotten why he’s on the floor, and only remembers when he notices Charon staring at him from the couch. Sil swallows and turns away. 

“Uh, Crow,” Sil says slowly, sitting up a little, “what is that?”

Crow looks up from the Vault Boys and shoots him a dazzling grin. “Food for the week. You’re welcome,” she says. Her voice is gratingly chipper. 

Sil reaches up to grip the side of the couch and pulls himself up to standing. He cradles the elbow that he landed on. “ _How_?” he asks.

Crow tilts her head to the side, her grin growing wider and wider. “Because _we_ ,” she says, spreading out her arms, “got a huge contract. And they already paid me half.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took so long sorry lmao. it's more of a filler chapter than anything sorry exciting things to come!!! song lyrics at the beginning from nfwmb by hozier


End file.
